Phil Bolger's Plywood Canoe Yawl

Bolger's Cartoon #24

Dear Phil:

The boat I have in mind is for a person who likes
to travel light and explore remote waters and sail big lakes, like the
coasts of Isle Royale in Lake Superior, the Leewanaw peninsula in Lake
Michigan, or some of the inland waterways.

The boat will have to be light enough to be pulled by
small car with a 90-horsepower engine; no more than 19 feet long (my
garage is only 21 feet long and the ferry to Isle Royale can only
transport boats up to 20 feet in length); simple enough for a novice to
build; big enough to accommodate two people overnight with ample room
for backpacking equipment and a two-week supply of food and clothing;
have an enclosed cabin; have a centerboard trunk that would not take up
the whole cabin; have shallow draft; make good speed under sail; be
easily rowed; be capable of taking moderate seas; and possess fair
lines.

In searching for such a boat, I came across two canoe
yawls: Albert Strange's Cherub and William Garden's Eel. Both
boats have features I like. Cherub possesses a functional (cruising
layout and has an outboard rudder, but Eel's shallow draft and
style are more to my liking. Maybe this dream boat would be more of a
nightmare than a dream, but if such a boat were possible, it could be a
very handy vessel for the person who likes to get away without a lot of
investment or hassle.

Tom Haglund Sodus, Michigan

===

I don't see anything nightmarish about an urge to create a
graceful little boat that pays respect to a pleasant tradition. I've
often thought that people who pay for boats that please the eyes and
stimulate the imaginations of passers-by ought to get some kind of tax
break for the public service.

The construction is supposed to be for a patient
novice. I think I've avoided features that are really difficult to
build, but I believe you feel that good looks are worth taking some
time and trouble. She's planked with plywood in easy curves all
through. The simplified shape isn't carried to the point of looking
crude, unless you have a prejudice against the hard chine. Chines can
be ugly, but this one has a fair sweep that's well clear of the water
and disappears at each end nothing ugly about it to an objective eye.

The deep-vee section is out of fashion now. Its function
has always been to allow inside ballast to be carried low in a hull of
minimum displacement for its beam, like the Baltimore Clippers and
Chapman's 18th-century Swedish privateers. It doesn't make good sense
in an outside ballasted boat; in this case, however, I suggest it for
carrying water ballast. Though water is light for its bulk, it can be
taken on free anywhere the boat can be used and dumped anywhere
outdoors without making a mess. And the boat can be lighter on a
trailer than one with ballast that has to be carried along.

I only did a rough estimate of the tank volume here, but
it's supposed to be on the order of 1000 pounds. The stripped weight of
a reasonably strong boat won't be more than another thousand, leaving
about 700 pounds for payload people, gear, and supplies. By current
standards, that's heavy displacement for a hull less than 16 feet on
the waterline. She would have a fair amount of momentum, won't feel
flighty in her motions, and will be positively self-righting. She can't
be driven fast (I'd be surprised if she ever touched 6 knots) and will
be a wet boat on the wind in a chop. She'll be a good sailer in light
airs, fit to row some distance if the sea is smooth and the air still.

She'd be stiffer under sail, and therefore faster and more
weatherly, if the ballast was lead. And she'd be stiffer still if the
bottom of the vee was cut off and replaced with a fin. The shallower
hull could be driven faster, and the flat-sided keel would allow the
centerboard to be much smaller with no increase in draft. But she would
be heavier on the trailer, noticeably harder to row on account of the
surface friction of the fin, and more likely to miss stays in a breeze.

A transom stern would allow a stiffer, faster, roomier
boat, with no functional penalty to speak of. But it wouldn't be a
canoe yawl, and the hard chine would be harshly prominent.

I tried to design her with an outboard rudder, but no
matter what I tried, the steering geometry came out wrong. Cranked and
wishbone tillers were too long; yoke and lines or a drag link made the
tiller too short. They all made a clutter that spoiled her looks. The
1896 Holmes-designed Eel for which Garden named his design, had
an outboard rudder mounted on a stern that no novice should think of
trying to build. With a transom stern, the mizzenmast stepped off
center, and the cockpit extended further aft, an outboard rudder would
work. But, in fact, I don t see much harm in this inboard rudder. It's
well protected and braced. The trunk for the stock is no more trouble
to build than the gimmickry needed to get an outboard rudder hooked up
past the mizzenmast. All of Strange's later canoe yawls had inboard
rudders, as did W.P. Stephens' famous canoe yawl Snickersnee.

Canoe yawls as short as this were usually meant for
singlehanding. On paper, two people can cruise in this one, with room
to lie down in the cuddy and sit there or in the cockpit But the
shipmates should be a loving couple, since they'll be touching each
other at all times unless they stand watch-and-watch.

Though Strange's Cherub II had a hinged and
sliding cabin top with side curtains, a sort of pop top, I've never to
this day figured a good way to make a door work in one of these. The
only one I ever designed that I liked was fitted as an overgrown hatch,
separate from the companionway, and it was replaced by a solid house
after two seasons. Also, I wanted this boat to be seaworthy, which I
define as "able to keep the sea in a gale with reasonable safety."

The trunk shown is high, to allow sitting up straight on
top of the ballast tank and centerboard trunk, but it has a low coaming
in keeping with her style. It's a simple shape to build, yet strong and
stiff without great weight. Wind resistance is small (it's not that
important compared with the wind resistance in her rig), it will shed
water well, and the grab rail is ideally placed. To keep the trunk
light, and incidentally to make it less obtrusive, no hatch is shown.

The cuddy is entered through a 2-foot-square opening in
the bulkhead. You slide your legs in first, then lower your butt to the
sole with hands on the lip of the trunk. Hands and knees will work best
to get out. The reward of being limber enough to do this is that
there's a good chance that the cuddy will stay dry.

The cockpit is self-draining with the hatch closed, but
the space below is sealed off watertight from the rest of the hull with
bulkheads. Shipping a green sea with the hatch open wouldn't be
disastrous. The advantage of a footwell of this type is that it can be
made fully self-draining if, for instance, you left her out in the rain
or were about to run a breaking inlet. But it allows you to put your
feet down most of the time without having to sit clear up on top of the
boat. The stowage space at the sides and ends is much handier than with
a tight, built-down footwell.

You can stand up to row, as diagrammed. The rowlocks are
misplaced on the sailplan; they should be about a foot farther aft.
With one foot up against the after bulkhead, an oarsman should be able
to pull strongly and see well.

I first tried a jib-headed cat-yawl rig, that being a
favorite of mine, but the mainmast came too far forward for a boat with
no forefoot, and was too long and too difficult to unstep for a real
trailer boat.

Next I looked at a balanced lug like Cherub II. I
once designed a canoe yawl, Windfola, with this rig, and her
owner likes her, but this rig has some bad habits for a seagoing boat.
The long yard slung on a single halyard can be something of a menace in
a crisis. I notice that Strange never repeated this rig in his later
designs.

Then I sketched a gaff-cat rig, much like the mainsail
shown here, with the mast unstayed and jib and mizzen eliminated. This
is a good rig for ocean passages if the boat is long enough to have the
mast well back from the bow and the boom inboard of the stem. But it's
not so good for control in tight places or steady riding to an anchor.
The unstayed mast is hard to unstep and, in any case, I doubted that
you'd like the look of it.

I settled on the classical yawl, except for a more
practical mizzen than used to be customary. The mast is stepped on
deck. It's short and light enough to pick up horizontally, slide the
heel slit onto its pin, and walk upright even with the boat afloat and
the water not smooth. To get an effective spread, the shrouds can't go
higher on the mast. This locates the height of the throat. Not wanting
to clutter the mast with upper shrouds and spreaders, I put the jibstay
not far above the shrouds. This made the jib a handy size to sheet with
a single part. To give her a boomed jib would call for a bigger head
angle, a longer base to the foretriangle, a longer bowsprit and a
bigger mizzen to balance it, and poorer aerodynamics not worth it to
save shifting one light line in tacking. Besides, a boomless jib with
two sheets is better for heaving to and maneuvering.

I made the gaff just shorter than the boom here, but my
afterthought is that she looks oversparred, even with the good reefing
properties of this rig. If I went on to working drawings, I think I
would take a foot or more off the gaff, which would allow shortening
the mast by half that. I've had two embarrassments in the past few
years from making rigs too big and tall; consequently, I'm slightly
gun-shy.

I take it the bowsprit and boomkin have to be removable to
meet the length restriction. I've thought about how to do this quickly,
but haven't decided just how to handle it, hence the vagueness of this
drawing.

I see plenty of ways to make her faster, roomier, and
cheaper, but they all result in a less striking ornament at an
anchorage. As a bonus, she looks more expensive than she is, and while
she won't be a very fast boat, I'll warrant she'll have good and
spirited manners.

•••

from Small Boat Journal May 1986; this never
seems to have been developed into a finished set of plans.